Equinox Part 2
In the Equinox '' |image= |series= |production=40840-221 |producer(s)= |story= Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky |script= Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky |director=David Livingston |imdbref=tt0708888 |guests=John Savage as Captain Rudy Ransom, Titus Welliver as Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Burke, Olivia Birkelund as Ensign Marla Gilmore, Eric Steinberg as Ankari, Steven Dennis as Thompson, Scarlett Pomers as Naomi Wildman and Rick Worthy as Noah Lessing |previous_production=Equinox Part 1 |next_production=Survival Instinct |episode=VGR S06E01 |airdate=22 September 1999 |previous_release=(VGR) Equinox Part 1 (Overall) What You Leave Behind |next_release=Survival Instinct |story_date(s)=Unknown |group="N"}} (2376) |previous_story=Equinox Part 1 |next_story=Survival Instinct }} Summary Previously Voyager unexpectedly receives a distress signal from another Federation starship, the USS Equinox, commanded by Rudy Ransom. Arriving at the scene, Voyager finds Equinox is being repeatedly attack by nucleogenic lifeforms, and that the first officer is an old Academy friend of B'lanna's. Shortly afterwards, an investigation by Voyager's crew discover evidence that Ransom and his people are carrying out unethical acts in order to speed up their return to the Alpha Quadrant, triggering a series of events that places Voyager at risk of destruction.... Conclusion As nucleogenic lifeforms attack Voyager, Captain Janeway discovers that she can use a deflector pulse to reinforce the shields and force the creatures off her ship. These attacks are occurring because the aliens are angry with Captain Ransom and the crew of the U.S.S. Equinox, another Starfleet vessel stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Ransom and his crew have killed dozens of the lifeforms for their organic matter in order to enhance the Equinox's propulsion systems and get back to the Alpha Quadrant. Now the aliens are trying to destroy both Starfleet ships. Ransom and his renegade crew have escaped from Voyager's brig and taken back the Equinox, leaving Voyager behind and effectively kidnapping Seven of Nine and the Doctor, who were on board. When Ransom attempts to engage the enhanced warp drive, the ship stalls. They learn that Seven has locked out the power relays with codes that only she knows. Ransom tries to coerce the codes out of her, but when she refuses to talk, Ransom deletes the Doctor's ethical subroutines in order to solicit his help. The hologram then sets out to extract the information from Seven's cortical implants, which will severely damage her brain. While the Voyager doctor is on the Equinox, the Equinox doctor in on Voyager. When Voyager gets away from the aliens and catches up with Equinox, the Equinox doctor manages to send Ransom a coded message to warn him. Janeway fires several photon torpedoes, badly damaging the Equinox. Ransom knows he cannot win, so he retreats into warp, temporarily escaping from Voyager. During the battle, Janeway managed to beam three of Ransom's crew aboard her ship. Janeway has one of Ransom's captured crewmembers tied up and put in the cargo bay, ordering him to reveal Ransom's tactical status. She's prepared to drop the shields around the room and allow the alien lifeforms to come in and kill him. He refuses to talk, so Janeway and Chakotay wait outside the cargo bay as a fissure begins forming in the cargo bay. When Chakotay realizes that Janeway isn't bluffing, he breaks into the room and fires his phaser at the fissure, collapsing it before an alien can pass through. Janeway is shocked at Chakotay's disobedience and relieves him of duty. Voyager manages to contact the Ankari, the race who innocently introduced the nucleogenic creatures to the Equinox crew. When the Ankari come aboard and summon the aliens, Janeway tells them that she will lead them to Equinox. When Voyager catches up with Equinox again, Ransom's conscience gets the better of him and he tells his crew that he is willing to cooperate with Janeway. Ransom's crew is not prepared to surrender, and his first officer, Lt. Burke, has Ransom arrested and takes control of the ship. Voyager begins firing on Equinox again, giving Ransom time to escape to the transporter room. Ransom then contacts Janeway, telling her that he is surrendering and will help her beam the Equinox crew aboard her ship. The nucleogenic lifeforms also begin to attack Equinox. They manage to kill Burke before Janeway can beam him to Voyager. The only person left on board Equinox is Captain Ransom. With the warp core about to breach, Ransom tells Janeway to get as far away as possible, then he navigates his ship to a safe distance, sacrificing himself as the Equinox explodes. Janeway reinstates Chakotay and strips the remaining Equinox crew of rank. She orders them to serve as Voyager crewman and tells them that they will have to earn her trust. Errors and Explanations Memory Alpha # It's unclear how and when The Doctor's ethical subroutines were re-instated, as it seems they had been by the time he returned to Voyager. It’s entirely possible, not to mention logical, that someone was able to restore them via a back up file once the situation had been resolved. Internet Movie Database Plot holes # Janeway is willing to extract information from Noah Lessing by inhumane methods if need be. Chakotay, though disgusted, cannot think of a saner alternative. Both seem to have forgotten that they have a number of mind readers in their crew, who have been helpful for this purpose in the past. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok is the most obvious example. That idea was probably considered and rejected as too risky, especially in light of what happened to Tuvok following the incident with Lon Suder in Meld. Nit Central # Richie Vest Why would a captain who fought Klingons and Romulans be assigned to a science vessel. He was originally a scientist, as was Janeway. # How would B'Elanna know what station Max was at. She probably recognised the input pattern of the transmission. # Dr Fidelius on Wednesday, September 22, 1999 - 7:58 pm: What is the effect of the alien's attack? Janeway just got right back up, Chakotay needed some time in sickbay, and Max was fried immediately. Consistent? I think not. Chris Booton (Cbooton) on Wednesday, September 22, 1999 - 8:14 pm: For the one touch by these guys and you die changed premise, I think the damage can vary depending on long you were in contact with them for. That one only pushed Janeway and shoved Chacotay, while the ones that died looked like the aliens went right through them. # PaulG on Wednesday, September 22, 1999 - 8:29 pm: I have to wonder why they keep talking about how horrible it is to kill "lifeforms." They have no problem killing "lifeforms" - they eat meat all the time. I fail to see the difference between killing a lifeform for organic fuel (food) or for engine fuel. The real problem is that Ransom and company are killing "sentient lifeforms" but we don't learn these creatures are actually sentient until Janeway communicates with them about 90 minutes into the plot. Until then, they could just be well organized animals in which case I fail to see the outrage. The sentience should have been mentioned sooner. Richie Vest on Wednesday, September 22, 1999 - 11:17 pm: ''The meat they would eat aboard Starships would be replicated and of course were never alive. ''PaulG on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 8:09 am: The only reason the food is replicated is because they can't get the real thing out in the Delta Quadrant. If I remember correctly, Sisko's restaurant in New Orleans served real meat (he was cleaning the clams in the alley, not something you would have to do with replicated food) and no one has any problem eating Klingon food which is usually still alive when you eat it. Paris and Tuvok had no qualms eating the spiders on the time warp planet in "Gravity". The evil of Ransom's actions is the fact that the lifeforms are sentient, a fact which is for the most part ignored. Seniram 21:22, March 14, 2018 (UTC) Replicated food is also eaten in the Alpha and Beta quadrants, at least according to Riker in Lonely Among Us. # Keith Alan Morgan on Wednesday, September 22, 1999 - 11:26 pm: Ransom uses the alien device to take a walk on the Takaran coast, but wasn't the alien from the NextGen episode with the metaphasic shield (Suspicions?) a Takaran? Why would a Delta quadrant alien device have an Alpha quadrant locale? The device is utilising Ransom’s memories of the location. # In part 1 Janeway said the Equinox could go Warp 8, but here she says it can only go Warp 6. This could be due to culmative damage from the aliens reducing the capabilities of the Equinox compared to the norm. # Chakotay, leader of a Maquis cell, a man responsible for commiting terrorist attacks on Cardassians is telling Janeway about right and wrong??? ScottN on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 1:36 am: Actually, I like that one. I noticed myself, and figured TPTB threw that in for irony, to show how far Janeway's obsession went. I thought Janeway's actions were more like Kirk's in Obsession than his in relation to Khan. Of course, she was even more like Khan with his Kirk obsession... ' # ''RM on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 2:45 am: Why did Chakotay let Janeway keep command? He could see that she was acting irrationally from the beginning of the episode and would not try the logical solutions of communicating with the transdimenisonal beings or finding the aliens. When Chakotay saw the way she was acting; he, Tuvok and the rest of the bridge crew should have met, and decided to temporarily relieve her of duty until they ended their encounters with Ransom. ''Matthew Patterson (Mpatterson) on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 6:04 am:'' Well, Chakotay tried. However, he shouldn't have done it alone. I think that the first officer and the ship's doctor together have the authority to relieve the ship's captain of command. He should have gone to the Doctor and they should have both confronted her. (Of course, going to the Doctor in this case wouldn't have helped, and we all know how easily Janeway threatens to shut down his program if he does anything she doesn't like.)' # ''Bela Okmyx on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 1:36 pm: At the end of the show, 7 says that the doctor was off-key in the second measure of the 3rd verse of "Clementine" by .0067 decibels (or whatever fraction, I don't remember the exact number). Decibels are a unit of volume (loudness), not pitch (which note you're singing). Musical pitches are measured in cycles per second, or Hertz. ScottN on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 2:51 pm: '' Bela Okmyx, I thought she said 0.03 deciHERTZ, which in fact is a unit of frequency... but I could have heard wrong ''R W F Worsley (Notanit) on Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - 6:54 am: Actually, according to the transcript at http://www.chakoteya.net, the vocal modulations deviated by point three zero decihertz. # Plantman on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 2:44 pm: I may have missed something, but how did Seven get into Ransom's mind holothing? Was it just the holothing taking an image from Ransom's mind? Or did the worm aliens have something to do with it? (Seven turned into a worm alien in Ransom's holodream) Annika Hanson on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 2:53 pm: I think Ransom was just delusional ScottN on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 2:53 pm: She didn't... It was Ransom's subconscious.''ScottN on Friday, September 24, 1999 - 9:47 am:''It was probably Ransom's conscience poking into his subconscience... # Roland Khorshidianzadeh on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 7:32 pm: So Ransom once battled the Klingons? I thought they were our allies! Wannabe Trek Writer on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 8:31 pm: Though the Empire is, indeed, allied with the Federation, there are always rogue Klingons out there. Lursa and B'Etor come to mind. ' # ''Sparrow47 on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 9:17 pm: Janeway asks Ransom how they got to the Delta Quad. He says the Caretaker, and Janeway says "We'll compare notes later." Problem: they never did. The only reason the Caretaker didn't send Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant was that he died. Why didn't he send Equniox back? ''Richie Vest on Thursday, September 23, 1999 - 11:20 pm:'' I believe the Caretaker said that sending Voyager back would be terrible complicated so one must assume that it would be the same for Equinox. ' # ''G. Hans on Friday, September 24, 1999 - 5:55 am: When Lessing got captured, there was a red shirt with him. I assumed he got captured too. What happened to him? At the end, the 5 Equinox crew are Yellow/Blue Shirts. PaulG on Friday, September 24, 1999 - 10:41 am: G.Hans: If I remember correctly, I believe the extra on the planet wore yellow, not red. That would make sense - security personnel in this timeframe wear yellow. Also, I am guessing that they have expended their supply of red-shirted ensigns long ago... # Why was Seven in the Takaran coast? This could have been a manifiestation of Ransom’s guilt. # How could the Equinox EMH have planted "photonic charges" in the walls without anyone knowing about it? There was a constant flow of people in Sick Bay. He was probably bluffing! # bioforce on Monday, October 11, 1999 - 8:00 am: When Janeway is firing at the creatures, she braces her firing arm with her other arm to prop it up, like she was firing a gun. However, the only reason you do this with a gun is because of the recoil. An energy weapon, like a phaser, has no recoil. So why bother to do this? margie on Monday, October 11, 1999 - 11:51 am: Maybe she did it to improve her accuracy. I know, as a photographer, that I can keep my camera steadier if I brace on arm with the other. ' # ''Locutus Ofborg on Tuesday, October 12, 1999 - 4:22 am: One point that seems to have been brought up is how Equinox has an EMH if Voyager was launched afterwards and its EMH was the prototype. Just one query: Has it been established in an episode that voyager's doctor was a prototype. He certainly was a new technology but was it not standard for all new staships.If it has been established does anyone know which ep? If it was established....would voyager have been the only ship to test the EMH? ''Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Tuesday, October 12, 1999 - 7:42 am:'' IMHO, The Equniox EMH was a beta test. The Voyager/Enterprise-E EMH was the regular release. The Promethius EMH (Andy Dick) was Version 2.0. This fits with the fact that the Equinox EMH isn't very good. Someone comments that he can barely hold a lazer scalpel and the Equinox captain trying to steal the Voyager EMH. ''' Notes Category:Episodes Category:Voyager